


Correlation

by shiptoomuch



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, dumb stuff, graphs and love, jim is drunk most of the time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-18
Updated: 2015-02-18
Packaged: 2018-03-13 13:23:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3383144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shiptoomuch/pseuds/shiptoomuch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes all of five times of Jim showing up in the crappiest campus clinic with a busted lip and a sorry excuse for the doctor there to finally take pity on him at last.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Correlation

**Author's Note:**

> just a dumb thing i wrote during calculus

It takes all of five times of Jim showing up in the crappiest campus clinic with a busted lip and a sorry excuse for the doctor there to finally take pity on him at last.

Of course, taking pity on him sounds more like “You damn fool” than any of the soft words that one might expect. But the point still stands that “You damn fool” is followed directly by, “Come on, I’ll buy you dinner.”

The doctor in the clinic just so happens to be the very same doctor who threw up on Jim’s shoes on the shuttle from Iowa. At the time, Jim had assumed that the guy was just a grumpy drunk. Five clinic visits later, Jim realizes that he was totally wrong and this guy is just downright unpleasant. It’s around the third visit that Jim decides he likes it.

So when Leonard “That’s _Doctor McCoy_ to you, kid. Stop it with this ‘Bones’ business.” McCoy says he’s going to feed Jim (probably a southern thing) with a pity-filled glare, he doesn’t think twice before dropping off of the exam table with a “hell yeah” and a moment to disguise dizziness as leaning against the table casually. (It doesn’t work on Bones. Only makes that glare deeper.)

Jim ends up in a greasy diner, eating fries that taste days old, sitting across from a doctor who’s nursing a cherry coke and wearing a healthy glare on a night when Jim sincerely hoped to end up between someone else’s sheets for a few hours. 

Under normal circumstances, back in Riverside, this would piss Jim off to no end, but these are anything but normal circumstances. He uprooted his life (or lack thereof) and joined _Starfleet_ just four weeks ago. Now, he’s got a closet full of cleaned-and-pressed-and-perfect red uniforms when he used to have a bag of maybe-clean t-shirts and jeans. And to top it all off, he’s got a maybe-almost-not-really friend that he only sees when he’s been beaten into an absolute pulp. So, really, Jim can’t find himself too angry here.

Under normal circumstances, he would probably also be trying to get into the good doctor’s pants. As it stands, Jim is too occupied throwing fries at the cantankerous brunet and asking invasive questions about his life.

“She was blonde.” Leonard growls out and throws a fried projectile back at Jim. “Why do you even care about my sorry life?”

“Because, _Bones,”_ Jim starts, making sure to draw out the loathed nickname. “In a campus full of fresh faced cadets straight from college or high school without a care in this wide world, you are the most interesting person I know.”

“So, what? You keep asking me these dumb as shit questions until someone else more interesting than me happens to walk by?” Leonard asks with a raised eyebrow and folded arms. “No thanks, kid. I’d rather not have a dumb blond like you strutting around with all my secrets.”

“I don’t strut!” Jim protests. He throws another fry for good measure.

“Sure you don’t.”

-

It surprises exactly one person-Jim, himself-when he starts finding himself on Bones’ couch more often than not. The doctor opens his door with a sigh and rolled eyes like he was expecting Jim and the kid showed up late. When Pike finds out about the ‘friendship’ across a game of chess, he smiles and nods ominously. The populace of cadets all groan at Leonard McCoy’s illustrious reputation and say something along the lines of, “Well, if anyone could handle that bastard, it’s you.”

No, Jim is the only one who ever pauses to wonder how he went from dive bars in the middle of cornfields to studying-actually _studying_ -things like inter-species diplomac with a doctor (and friend?) fussing around him and putting creams on his cuts and bruises.

 

Jim attempts to explain it away by saying that the command cadets all come fresh from high school, but the point stands that if Jim wanted to find someone his own age, he need only pick one of the many science or medical cadets who get their many degrees before coming to Starfleet. It’s a weak excuse at best.

The thing about Leonard McCoy, the thing that makes Jim so intent on being his friend, is that which deters most people. Leonard is a challenging person. Not only is he hard to be around most days, he makes Jim think. It takes only that raised eyebrow and those folded arms for Jim to second guess whatever it was that he was about to say or do. For some reason that Jim cannot really figure out, Jim wants to impress Leonard McCoy.

If Bones had been one of his school teachers, he would’ve given up long ago with a shrug and a “whatever, he was an asshole” but apparently Jim’s life is changing in a big way, because he can walk away from Bones just as much as he could say no to Pike in that bar. 

-

“You’re a grumpy piece of shit, Bones.” Jim slurs out on a particular Thursday night when he’s too hammered and too beaten up to filter what he says. In his hand is clutched a napkin that Bones is ignoring for some reason and that Jim _knows_ is important.

 

“So they keep telling me.” Leonard says like he’s not listening while he dabs at a cut left by a class ring above Jim’s left eye. “Who the hell did you piss off this time?”

Jim ignores the question and presses on in his previous train of thought. “But the thing is, Leonard Horatio McCoy-geez, your name sucks, you’re a bastard but I know what’s inside.” Jim pokes at Bones’ chest. “In here.”

Leonard knocks his hand away with a scoff. “What’s in there? I’m dying to hear.”

“In there? You’re…fuzzy.” Jim waits a beat and smiles at his eloquence. “Yeah, you’re all soft and fuzzy inside. Like a teddy bear. You love people, Bones. You just think they’re stupid.”

“How d’you figure that?”

“Because you still haven’t kicked me out of your place.” Jim says resolutely.

Bones sighs and puts down the tube of cream. He almost reaches for the hypospray that would sober Jim up in a few seconds but seems to decide against it because he instead picks up the regen. “Look, Jim. Just because I let your sorry ass sit on my couch day in and day out, does not mean I’m fixin’ to welcome the whole damned campus into my house.”

Jim shakes his head until Bones grabs his chin to hold it in place and stick the regen onto the cut above Jim’s eye. “No, Bones, you love people but you don’t _like_ them that much. I’m different. I’m your _favorite_.” Jim rocks forward and back on the two syllables of the stressed word. “That must be why you’re meaner to me than you are to everyone else.”

“Sure, kid.” Leonard says and Jim may be drunk as all get out, but he’s just this side of sober enough to recognize the change in Bones’ voice. “Keep thinking that.”

“I’m right.”

“You need to stop wandering in here when it’s the end of my shift.” Bones scolds Jim while he packs up his things and Jim waits for him to drag him back home safe and sound. “I’d like to go home and have a bourbon on my couch, but your fool ass always keeps me from doing that.”

 _“Boooones,_ I didn’t mean to get beat up this time.” Jim slurs. “I was thinking.”

“Even worse.”

Jim sidles up next to Bones and leans his head on his shoulder. “It’s important, Bones. Like, more important than the time I won beer pong against the Andorians.”

Bones disguises his laughter with a mock coughing fit. “Oh no, let me clear my schedule.” He shrugs his shoulder and knocks Jim off of him.

Jim pouts at Bones and thrusts his hand holding the napkin out at him. “I made a graph.”

At this point, Jim seems to have actually gotten Bones’ attention, because he drops the scowl and takes the napkin, only to have it return again. “Jim, what the hell is this? ‘Bitchiness vs Love’?”

“Not just anyone’s bitchiness, your bitchiness.” Jim says with a grin as he throws himself onto a stool. “As in, the relationship between how much you love someone vs how bitchy you are to them.”

“And this dot is you?” Leonard points to the dot the farthest over on the spectrum and the highest up. “At least, I think you wrote your name there.” He narrows his eyes and tilts the napkin in various directions.

“Yep. As you can see, I’m the one you’re the bitchiest to. And since there seems to be almost a completely direct correlation, logic stands that you must love me the most.”

“You could be an outlier.”

Jim pushes himself to his feet again and gets too close to Bones. Close enough to smell aftershave and stale mint and hospital smell. “I don’t think I am.”

This time, “You damn fool” is mumbled against Jim’s lips, rather than across a room.

**Author's Note:**

> feedback appreciated!  
> tumblr: fabtrek


End file.
